


Never Seemed So Right Before

by starrybouquet



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alien Influence (sorta), F/M, Fluff, Season/Series 08, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrybouquet/pseuds/starrybouquet
Summary: And though it's just a line to youFor me it's trueAnd never seemed so right beforeCarter accidentally drank a truth serum on P3C-298, Jack accidentally locked himself in Carter's quarters, and suddenly, the universe aligned. Just a little.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 22
Kudos: 41
Collections: Stargate Winter Fic Exchange 2020-21





	Never Seemed So Right Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stargnusxcarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargnusxcarter/gifts).



> Thanks goes to Caro_the_Poet for the quick beta!
> 
> stargnusxcarter, hope you love it. I'm sorry I couldn't fit Daniel/Janet in...I did include some Janet, though? Hope that's okay <3
> 
> Set in season 8.

_And though it's just a line to you_  
_For me it's true_  
_And never seemed so right before_

* * *

It started when Jack received a call from Dr. Frasier, who informed him that the “ceremonial beverage” SG-1 had drank on P3C-298 was a “truth serum” of sorts, and she was keeping Colonel Carter under observation. Daniel and Teal'c were free to go, having only had a sip. However, Carter, as the leader of the team, had been forced to down the entire drink or offend their trading partners.

“I sent Sam to her quarters to sleep it off, but you’ll need to postpone the briefing, General,” Janet told him.

“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”

“No problem.”

Jack, stupid sappy idiot that he was, had had the insane urge to check on Carter. He didn't do that anymore. Why, today of all days? When she’d taken a damn _truth serum_?

He’d just stepped into her quarters when the alarms began sounding. Hurriedly, Jack had tried to pull the door back open.

Only to find it locked.

As was just his luck, the scientists down the hall had accidentally released some sort of chemical from an alien canister SG-12 had brought back last week, triggering an immediate lockdown of the surrounding area. Now, a hazmat team was working to get the chemical under control, and Jack was stuck right in the blast zone.

So for the past few hours, Jack had been running the base via the phone in Carter's quarters. He'd managed to evacuate all non-essential personnel, and with any luck, they were on their way home no worse for the wear. There wasn't anything he could do on the chemistry front beyond badger the hazmat team and the scientists responsible for the state of his base.

It looked like they wouldn't be getting out of there anytime soon. But that was the least of Jack's problems.

Carter had been sleeping the entire time Jack had been there--the kind of dead-to-the-world sleep that he usually only saw when she was injured. But as Jack finally finished the last of the "okay, emergency, everyone evacuate" type of calls, he saw Carter stir, and knew that his luck was about to run out.

"Hey Carter. Listen, there's been a little problem. We're probably gonna be stuck here for a while."

He laid out the situation, not sure if his audience was totally awake.

"Okay," she replied when he finished.

And sneezed. Right in his face.

“Bless you,” Jack said, unable to keep the grin from his face.

“Sorry,” Carter replied, and went back to sleep.

So that was that, then.

* * *

The next time she woke up, the scientists hadn’t made any progress--the chemical evaded all attempts at containment. Jack had found a spare pad of paper and was doodling, wishing he had his Gameboy or even his laptop.

"Jack. Why'd you leave?" she asked, quiet but clear. He looked up, startled--both at the use of his given name and the question.

"I’m right here, Carter."

She frowned up at him. "You’re always the General now. I used to see Jack, sometimes."

"Um. Well. I _am_ the General, y'know,” he deflected. He was loath to have a serious conversation with a Carter without a filter, and he also knew that there was no method of escape.

"What did I do?" Her blue eyes, always Jack's weakness, looked up at him, forlorn. "I know I'm not funny or interesting, but I’ve never been funny or interesting. That didn't change."

Jack didn't know what to say to that. It was so...un-Carter-like, the confusion, the complete lack of confidence. Although he supposed her matter of fact tone was most definitely Carter-like. There were just so many things she wasn’t seeing, things he didn’t know how to put into words.

"I have a motorcycle, you know," she said when he took too long to respond.

"I know that. And...you're our expert on the Stargate, for crying out loud. How could you ever think you aren't interesting?" A thought occurred to him, and he swallowed. "Does Pete think that?"

"No." She turned on her side, facing away from him. "But you do," she finished, in a voice so small that he could barely hear it.

Taken aback, Jack opened his mouth, but no words came out. "Carter?" he finally managed, haltingly.

She didn't respond.

"Carter...I'm right here."

She only shook her head, buried it in the pillow, mumbling something he couldn't understand.

Jack moved from the desk to the bed, hands aching to reach out to her. He sat on them instead.

"You're funny," he said, desperate, looking fixedly at her back. "And interesting. And...hell, Carter, I meant it when I said you're a national treasure. Not just your brain, your whole...you." He gestured at her back, even though he knew she couldn't see it.

"It's not true," she whispered. "It's my brain people want. Not me." She rolled over, and looked up at him brokenly. Jack took one look at her tear-streaked face and he knew he was a goner.

Screw the regulations. The raw need in Sam's eyes was a look he'd never seen before, not in Netu, not in any Goa'uld prison. He’d ignored it once, he knew, when Daniel died, blinded by his own grief. He wouldn’t do that a second time.

"God, Carter." In one fluid motion, Jack lay down on the bed and pulled her into his arms. She went willingly, curling into him, and he couldn’t help but press his lips to her hair.

"Your brain is amazing. But it's you who saves us, every damn time. Not your brain,” he emphasized. “You."

"And I…" Jack hesitated a moment. For nearly five years, he’d avoided saying this stuff, because that’s what he thought Carter had wanted. But if she was going to undervalue herself so severely…

To hell with the regs. Carter was more important to Jack than any stupid regulations, and he wasn’t going to sit here and see her in pain when it was all so, so wrong.

Plus, it wasn’t anything she wouldn’t know if she looked. Jack knew better than anyone that he gave himself away in a hundred little ways.

"I want you, not your brain,” Jack said softly, and he felt like he couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of his mouth. “Your smile. You laughing at my stupid jokes.” He paused, voice growing even softer. “In my bed.”

She rolled over at that, eyes wide, a little bit shocked, but not offended or horrified at his words. Despite the fact that Jack had known his feelings weren’t really a secret, had known that she wouldn’t be _repulsed_ by them or anything, he still breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn't made a move to scoot away from him.

Carter opened her mouth to say something, and that, of course, was the moment the phone chose to ring.

Jack glanced towards the wall-mounted phone automatically, and then ignored it in favor of hearing whatever Carter was about to say.

Carter being Carter, however, always put duty first. “You have to answer that,” she said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

“Carter--I don’t want to just leave like this.”

She smiled a little at him--not a full grin, just an upward tilt of her lips. “It’ll be okay.”

He still hesitated.

“Answer it,” she repeated.

Jack answered it.

Carter was always right, after all.

* * *

By the time Jack had approved the experimental thing the scientists wanted to try, and their level had been cleared to open back up, and he’d gotten the base back to normal--or as normal as the SGC ever got--Janet had already approved Carter to go home.

“Sorry, General,” she told Jack when he stopped by the infirmary to look for Carter.

“That’s okay, Doc,” he said, hovering near Janet’s office doorway, trying to figure out how to ask what he wanted to ask.

“Was there something else?” Janet asked, seeing right through him.

“Yeah. Was there anything…” He paused, searching for the right words. “Could the truth serum thingy have been contagious?”

The Doctor frowned. “Well, yes, it could have been contagious--it seemed more bacterial than anything else. But it was ultimately pretty harmless, and so fast-acting that it had cleared out of her system by the time I sent her home, and she wasn’t in contact with anyone on base except you.”

“Doc, she sneezed on me, when I went to check on her.”

Janet caught on immediately. “Even if you had been ‘infected’, sir, you’d be clear by now.”

“I know that. I just...was wondering.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“You could have had it. I’m sorry, sir, that I didn’t warn you. Sam was sleeping when you said you’d check on her, and--”

“Not your fault,” he interrupted, and then sighed. “Mine. ‘Night, Doc.” Jack rapped the doorway once and headed out.

“Jack,” Janet called, as he neared the infirmary entryway.

Janet Fraiser could read him too well. “Yeah?”

“Whatever you said...she probably already knew.”

“I don’t know about that,” he sighed. “But thanks anyway.”

She nodded.

* * *

Jack spent the evening playing their conversation over and over in his head, hating the way the words had spilled out of him and how they’d been interrupted and the uncertainty of it all.

He’d just finished dinner when he heard Carter’s car pull up, and he felt himself tense in worried anticipation.

He opened the door as she stepped onto the porch. For a moment, they just looked at each other in the dim light of the porch lamp.

"That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me,” she said, as if the intervening hours between their last conversation and this one hadn’t happened.

Jack winced. "The truth serum may have been, uh, contagious."

Damn it. That was _not_ what he had wanted to say.

"Oh.” Carter’s eyes dropped to the concrete. "I'm sorry for bothering you, sir. I'll just--"

"No!” he said, frustrated and suddenly just as desperate as he’d been earlier. "It...all of it was true."

"You don't have to say that to make me feel better, sir,” she said, eyes still fixed on the ground.

"Oh, for crying out loud. It's a truth serum!" She knew that meant that he literally couldn’t have been lying, right?

Jack took a deep breath. Frustration wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Softer, he said, "Just because I don't usually say it...doesn't mean I don't think those things."

Carter looked at him then, searching his face, and Jack tried to stay very, very still. Finally, her face broke out into a smile--the kind that took his breath away. "Okay.”

“We’re okay?”

“We’re better than okay,” she said, still smiling. “Can I come in?”

He stepped out of the doorway, gestured her inside. “How ‘bout a Diet Coke?”

* * *

_I practice every day to find some clever_  
_Lines to say_  
_To make the meaning come true_  
_But then I think I'll wait until the evening_  
_Gets late_  
_And I'm alone with you_  
_The time is right_  
_Your perfume fills my head_  
_The stars get red_  
_And oh the night's so blue_  
_And then I go and spoil it all_  
_By saying something stupid_  
_Like I love you_

_I love you_  
_I love you_  
_I love you_


End file.
